spirits, and his labour in carrying on his Dictionary, he answered the
stated calls of the press twice a week from the stores of his mind,
during all that time.

Posterity will be astonished when they are told, upon the authority of
Johnson himself, that many of these discourses, which we should suppose
had been laboured with all the slow attention of literary leisure, were
written in haste as the moment pressed, without even being read over by
him before they were printed. It can be accounted for only in this way;
that by reading and meditation, and a very close inspection of life,
he had accumulated a great fund of miscellaneous knowledge, which, by a
peculiar promptitude of mind, was ever ready at his call, and which
he had constantly accustomed himself to clothe in the most apt and
energetick expression. Sir Joshua Reynolds once asked him by what means
he had attained his extraordinary accuracy and flow of language. He told
him, that he had early laid it down as a fixed rule to do his best on
every occasion, and in every company; to impart whatever he knew in
the most forcible language he could put it in; and that by constant
practice, and never suffering any careless expressions to escape him,
or attempting to deliver his thoughts without arranging them in the
clearest manner, it became habitual to him.

As The Rambler was entirely the work of one man, there was, of course,
such a uniformity in its texture, as very much to exclude the charm
of variety; and the grave and often solemn cast of thinking, which
distinguished it from other periodical papers, made it, for some time,
not generally liked. So slowly did this excellent work, of which twelve
editions have now issued from the press, gain upon the world at large,
that even in the closing number the authour says, 'I have never been
much a favourite of the publick.'